The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2023/the-wizard-of-splash).
**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig. My name is Craig. My name is Craig Mazin. Oh!
**John:** This is Episode 612 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
Today on the show, if the hero of your story is a fish out of water, it really matters what that water is. We’ll look at the importance of starting context for your character’s journey and definitively break down all films into just two categories. We’ll also looking at Rotten Tomatoes, gibberish, vanishing movies, and in our Bonus Segment for Premium members, Craig, we have a new suggestion from you.
**Craig:** Yes. Today on our Bonus Segment, we’re gonna be talking about diabetes, both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
**John:** Fantastic.
**Craig:** Lots to discuss. Worth the five bucks, I should say.
**John:** Yes, because you’ll get news and insight.
**Craig:** Could be lifesaving.
**John:** It could be lifesaving, generally could be, but only for the people who can pay $5.
**Craig:** Correct. Everyone else dies.
**John:** Dies. We have some follow-up, speaking of things that are no longer on this earth. Drew, help us out.
**Drew Marquardt:** Ghosted by the Studios writes, “While I’m so happy for Craig and those Disney Plus show creators to be able to have a physical copy of their work, I’m sad not to be in their company. A film that I wrote and deeply love, and for which I earned my first Writers Guild award nomination for, was unceremoniously disappeared from a streaming site a few months ago with no warning, leaving me with no record of the movie I wrote. I was gutted. I still am. Since then, I’ve been trying to get a DVD copy or even a digital link so I can have the movie in my library to show my kids when they’re old enough, but unfortunately, my contract was for a feature film, as the film was originally slated to go to theaters before COVID sent it to streaming instead. Because of that, I was only entitled to a DVD if a DVD was produced. But since the movie was an original film for the streaming site, there was never a DVD made. This has all left me wondering if there’s any possibility the Guild could ever create a new contract stipulation, that for films that go directly to streaming, the screenwriter is entitled to a digital copy of the movie at the least.
“There seems to be nothing I can do about it now, but perhaps we could save future screenwriters from the pain of losing something that means so much to them by adding new creative rights language to keep up with the times. Do you think that’s possible?”
**John:** I feel really bad for Ghosted here. On the question whether that’s a Guild thing that could happen, it’s not inconceivable. It’s nothing that’s gonna be happening in this time. What you’re talking about with if the film has a DVD, you get a copy of the DVD, that was in your individual contract. When Craig and I did the episode where we talked through your individual contract, that’s one of the clauses that’s really standard to be in there. Maybe we can break our advice down in a couple categories. What should Ghosted do right now, and then, Craig, what should we be thinking about so future people don’t get in Ghosted’s situation?
**Craig:** Certainly quite a bit of empathy here, Ghosted, although I’m gonna give you a little ray of hope. It hasn’t been disintegrated. It’s just been removed from streaming now. That doesn’t mean it won’t come back. The odds are, at some point all this stuff will somehow come back. They generally like to make money off of these things.
Right now you can try, as you said, to get a copy. It’s gonna be difficult, because A, we’re on strike, and the companies have even less instinct to help us than they normally would. Also, it’s Disney, and good luck navigating that whole situation. They also have this bizarre thing where they don’t want to give you a digital copy of something for fear that it will lead to piracy of the thing that they don’t even give you an option to see legally. It’s gonna be a bit of an uphill battle there.
I think going ahead, this is really a cri de coeur for agencies and lawyers, maybe even more importantly, lawyers to just put these clauses into contracts that guarantees a digital or physical copy for everything that you do if something is produced. That just seems like a good idea to start doing. If companies are reluctant or resistant, then it ultimately comes down to more successful writers, very successful writers, I should say, I don’t know how successful Ghosted is, who can get whatever they want, to begin kicking that door open. This feels like it’s going to become a boilerplate clause soon enough. The lawyers are all aware of what’s going on.
**John:** Yeah. We’ll start with the second part, going ahead, how do we get this solved. Ghosted, you as a screenwriter really want a copy of that movie. You know who else does? The director. Directors will fight for it in their contracts. Whether DGA makes it an issue, who knows. But once that veil is breached, then I think we can see, okay, you have a right to a digital copy or a physical copy of whatever work that you’ve done.
I would say that is actually a thing that Ghosted can pursue right now. I don’t know what your relationship is like with the director or the producer or the editor. I would reach out to the director and say, “Hey, do you have a copy of this somewhere?” because they probably do. They probably copied it off the AVOD at some point and they have some version of it somewhere. Just get that, stick it on a drive somewhere, just so you have some backup. The editor might also have that kind of thing. You don’t have to say to anybody that you have it. Just so you know from your personal security. Your kids will be able to see this thing you did.
Craig is right. These companies are not in the business of not making money. If they can money off this movie you wrote, they’ll put it on some other service, some other site. They’ll find a way to sell it, because it’s not making them any money right now, and they like to make money off of it. That’s going to help. It’ll be on iTunes or Amazon or some other place to rent or buy, because they want to make money. It’s really frustrating for you right now that this movie that was just 2020 is not available to see anywhere in the world.
**Craig:** That’s good advice, to reach out to the director. I guarantee you the director has a non-finished version at the very least, maybe the final director’s cut or something like that. It’s not gonna be perfect. The sound is all gonna be temp and rough and unmixed. The director may be reluctant to share this with you because it will be watermarked to them. If it does get out there, then they’re in trouble. It just is an exercise in trust and comes down to your relationship with that person.
The editor almost certainly no longer has access to the files. All that stuff gets locked up, because when we edit now, by and large the media does not rest on the editor’s computer the way it used to. The editor used to have a bunch of hard drives sitting there at the table with all the media. The way we’re accessing those now is everything is located in some, I think for The Last of Us it was all in some server farmed and downtown LA. The nice part is you could edit the show anywhere you were, but you, unsurprisingly, do not have physical access to the media. It’s now under lockdown.
**John:** I would say one situation in which they may have made a physical copy it or they may have put it on a hard drive is, did you have a test screening? If you had a test screening, that was probably something that was carried to that theater.
**Craig:** Yeah, a DCP.
**John:** There may be some version of it that’s out there someplace. Worth asking. By the way, if you’re having this conversation with the editor, with the director, they have the same concerns you do, and so maybe together you can, once the Strike’s over, lobby hard to get that copy of it.
We had Patrick Somerville on the podcast a while back. He did the show Station 11, which I loved so much. He was really concerned that at some point the show that he’d done for HBO Max would disappear. He was able to finally get a DVD copy of it, just so he could have it on his shelf someplace. What you’re fearing and feeling is felt across the industry.
**Craig:** Everyone’s wrestling with this right now. Nobody until really a year ago had contemplated that things would just disappear. We’re all still scratching our heads, because very few of us are tax attorneys, to even figure out why they’re doing this, but they’re doing it. Greater minds than ours are currently tackling this problem. Let us hope that they solve it.
**John:** It looks like we have another bit of follow-up here. This is from an academic perspective.
**Drew:** This is from David. He writes, “I’m an academic librarian at a university, and I occasionally get requests from instructors who want to show a video, often a documentary, in class. There’s a classroom exemption in copyright law which allows performance or display of any material in an in-person classroom setting for educational persons without violating copyright. So if the library or the instructor has a DVD or Blu-ray of the material, there’s no problem showing it in class. Unfortunately, it’s increasingly the case that the video the instructor wants to show is only available from a streaming service, usually Netflix. All the standard streamers have licensing terms that don’t allow public display, which is defined to include classrooms. And of course none of the streamers offer institutional subscriptions, since they want individual students to subscribe. In these cases, I have to inform the instructor that there’s no legal way to show the video in class. They wouldn’t be violating copyright law, but they would be breaching the terms of their license. Of course, many instructors don’t bother asking and just show the video using their personal Netflix account, ignoring the licensing terms. But it’s really maddening that streamers provide no legal means to show their videos in class. I’m happy when they’re made available on Blu-ray, since that provides a way to legally use them in a classroom.”
He also writes that Netflix does have a program where they allow the showing of some of their documentaries for educational purposes, with very strict limits. However, he’s yet to have an instructor request a video that was on that list.
**Craig:** A lot of people don’t understand that when they are watching a streaming service, they click accept terms at some point, without reading the terms, of course, and those licensing terms are like a private contract between you and Netflix. You are agreeing that you are paying this money for a specific set of rights to view their streaming work. That can supersede copyright law, because it is essentially more binding. It’s an additional thing that you’re agreeing to.
In this instance, David, I would fully flout the law and dare Netflix to hunt you down and sue you for having somebody show a documentary in a classroom. They’re not going to do it. They don’t have the time. They don’t have the care. It would be terrible publicity. I think the terms there are designed to protect Netflix from one person using an account to roll a movie of theirs in a bar and charge people to come and watch it. It’s not about a classroom. I wouldn’t worry about this. But you’re right. This is indeed technically the case.
**John:** I think classrooms and copyright are a really interesting intersection, because there have obviously been issues where instructors will want a chapter from a book and they’ll have it photocopied out and that will become a copyright violation. There’ll be whole issues with that. They’ve been dealing with that for a while.
I think, Craig, your advice is the right one here. Just turn the blind eye and do it in this situation, because they’re never going to come after you. You do need to be mindful of certain places might, but the big ones are not gonna risk the publicity of that kind of fight.
**Craig:** Look, if you have to know that one of your student’s moms is an IP lawyer at Netflix, then maybe not. But other than that, go for it. This feels about as victimless a crime as it gets. Netflix, their licensing terms, although they do supersede fair use doctrine, the spirit of fair use is being violated there. This feels a little bit like civil disobedience to me in a nice way, even though it’s not like they’re a government or anything.
**John:** I wouldn’t be surprised to see some case law in this area in years to come, because we have those exemptions and copyright for a reason. The fact that it’s a slightly different medium shouldn’t really impact that.
**Craig:** I wouldn’t hold your breath on that, only because Netflix’s point is, we’re not requiring you to watch our stuff. You’re agreeing to it. We’re putting some conditions here. If you don’t like them, then don’t pay us money, and don’t watch it. It’s legal. It’s just lame.
**John:** It’s lame. Finally, our most important bit of follow-up, back in Episode 610 in our Bonus topic, we talked about going back to school and lining up to go from room to room in size order. We have an answer for why we did that.
**Drew:** Ian says, “Size order is for the teacher’s benefit to aid with inventory and roll call. When everyone’s in a single line, the teacher can stand at the front and see the faces of every student and ensure, in theory, that each student can see the teacher. The line of height becomes ingrained so any gap is easily identifiable by sight, and also no need to memorize names.”
**Craig:** I reject this explanation as thoroughly and vigorously as any explanation can be rejected. Look. First of all, we know, because we all lined up in size order, that there are going to be at least three to four kids in 5th grade who are almost exactly the same height. It’s not like every kid is three inches… The one in front is two feet, and the one in back is seven foot nine? That just doesn’t work that way.
Second of all, gaps? The notion that this lineup is that orderly… It’s not the military. We’re talking about nine-year-olds who are nuts. They’re all wiggling around and hunching and standing up and jumping. The boys are punching each other for no apparent reason.
If you can’t memorize their names, particularly when you are an elementary school teacher, which is where the lineup is happening, and you are responsible for the same group all day long, five days a week, then something’s wrong with you. Plus, they slap name-tags on you for the first three weeks. There’s not gonna be a gap. The only noticeable gap would occur if, again, you had some extremes of height.
Here’s my explanation. Size order is because they just want you to get in a damn line, and it gives you a reason to get in a line. More importantly, this is why it happens. Ian, I want you to listen carefully, because my explanation is one million times better than yours. Making kids line up in size order eliminates this thing that happens, primarily with boys, where they want to be in front of each other, that somehow being earlier in line is better, so they give you an ordering to follow so that you stop fighting about nonsense.
**John:** I like that as a theory. Another theory I’ll float is that kids want to be the tallest, and so they think the tallest should be in first, in front. Instead, this makes the smallest kid the leader of the line. That feels good, helping the underdog.
When I think about lining up in size order, I cannot help but think about the Von Trapp children in Sound of Music and the whistle. They’re lining up in line. Then you really could see a gap. Then you have a very limited set of children, so you’re going to notice when someone’s missing there.
**Craig:** Yes, perhaps Hans or-
**John:** Here’s my other question. Possibly, they want to make sure that kids are learning the importance of a sorting algorithm. Are you doing a bubble sort? What is the proper way of, am I taller than this person next to me? How are they determining where they should be in that line?
**Craig:** Is it a first-in-first-out stack? Are you popping? Absolutely. You may be on to something, that this is really about training the next generation of database management.
**John:** We would love to hear from actual grade school teachers to see, A, are you ever lining up by height? In my class it was always by last name, because we were mostly going down to the cafeteria and had to sign in for school lunch. If you are lining up by height, why are you doing? I want actual teachers with on-the-ground experience.
**Craig:** Actual teachers, on-the-ground experience. I will continue to reject… I don’t care if the entire National Education Association issues a press release.
**John:** Randi Weingarten is going to come here and she’s going to talk to us about it.
**Craig:** If Randi Weingarten comes and says, “No no no, really is so that you can see all the faces of each student,” I’m gonna reject it. I’m gonna punt that into the sun a thousand times.
**John:** It’s come time for our marquee topic. This all stems from a dream I had while I was traveling.
**Craig:** Oh, my.
**John:** In this dream, I was talking with a writer about their script. Rachel Bloom was sitting next to me for some reason. She was not really an active part of the dream, but it felt like an important detail that Rachel was sitting next to me.
I was talking to this writer. I said, “You have your character going on a journey that takes them to a new world. It’s new for them, and it’s new for us. We’re learning about that new world with them. It’s like The Wizard of Oz. It’s kind of hard for that to be funny, because your hero is reacting in ways that are completely what we’d expect, because it’s new and bizarre to them. Compare that to Splash. There you have an outsider coming to a world that the audience fully understands, and the comedy is that this hero doesn’t understand this world, and that tension is part of what makes it funny.”
My thesis coming out of this dream is that not all movies are fish out of water stories, but all fish out of water stories can be sorted into either The Wizard of Oz or Splash. Craig?
**Craig:** Yes?
**John:** Do you believe this premise?
**Craig:** I would argue with your dream premise that it’s hard to be funny when you are going into a new world.
**John:** Harder. I think there’s moments of comedy that you’re missing because it’s a new world.
**Craig:** It’s different comedy, but yes, either the fish is going on land or the human is going in water.
**John:** The land being, we’re used to land as humans.
**Craig:** Right.
**John:** Great. Okay.
**Craig:** Either somebody that doesn’t belong in the world we know comes into it or somebody leaves the world we know and goes into one we don’t.
**John:** What I’ll call The Wizard of Oz stories, the hero comes from the mundane world, Kansas, to a new world. Dorothy arrives in Oz. It’s literally in color. She has to learn about all the rules of the world. The audience is on the same page. We are not ahead of the hero at all about this world. We have to learn how it works with the hero. Classic template.
Splash movies are basically the hero comes from a strange world to a very mundane world. In Splash, she’s a mermaid who comes to New York. They don’t know how to behave, but the audience does know how to behave. That’s the comedy. These are usually comedies, Splash setups. It comes from that tension between what the hero is doing, not understanding the rules of the world.
**Craig:** Very often, when we’re talking about a movie where somebody leaves a world we don’t know to enter our world, the hero is not that person. The hero is a person in the real world who is trying to help the new arrival acclimate.
**John:** Classically, the Tom Hanks character you would say is the hero of Splash.
**Craig:** Unquestionably.
**John:** He is trying to help Daryl Hannah’s character adapt to this situation she finds herself in.
**Craig:** Do you remember her name?
**John:** Manhattan?
**Craig:** No, not Manhattan. Madison.
**John:** Madison, of course. That was probably the introduction of Madison as a name that actual children were named.
**Craig:** Madison, after Splash came out, took over two things at the same time, as I recall. One, little girls everywhere being born named Madison, and also a wave of porn stars named Madison. This is a really strange juxtaposition of things. Yes, Madison, she got the name because of Madison Avenue. They just picked something, because they were trying to give her a name and they looked up and they were on Madison Avenue. Ganz and Mandel were responsible for naming god knows how many millions of people and at least a couple of hundred porn stars.
**John:** Let me list some movies that I would say are Wizard of Oz template movies. If you disagree with any of these, we can discuss them. The Matrix.
**Craig:** Sure, yeah.
**John:** Midsommar.
**Craig:** Yeah.
**John:** [Unintelligible 00:20:53] basically goes to Sweden. Back to the Future.
**Craig:** Sure.
**John:** The Lost Boys.
**Craig:** Yes.
**John:** Lost in Translation.
**Craig:** Yes.
**John:** Jumanji.
**Craig:** Unquestionably.
**John:** Yeah, a hundred percent. Vengeance, B.J. Novak’s Vengeance, which we haven’t discussed on the show, but it’s really, really good. I went to see B.J. Novak’s Vengeance. He is a New York podcaster who goes to rural Texas.
**Craig:** The one that I keep thinking of is, I don’t know why, the Ricky Gervais movie where he goes where no one lies.
**John:** The Invention of Lying.
**Craig:** Invention of Lying. Just very typical comedy of somebody… Or Galaxy Quest is another really good example. Even though they were on a show that was like the Oz that they go to, when they actually go into space, they are completely lost and adrift and trying to figure out the rules and it’s funny.
**John:** Let’s talk through some Splash movies. I would say Barbie is a Splash movie. Her Barbie world is really strange. She comes to our normal world. The Little Mermaid is of course a Splash movie. She’s literally a mermaid. School of Rock, he is not used to this-
**Craig:** Yeah, the world of regular people.
**John:** Yeah, so he’s breaking all the rules, intentionally or not. Thor.
**Craig:** Yes.
**John:** The first Thor.
**Craig:** The first Thor, yeah.
**John:** First Thor. Pretty Woman.
**Craig:** Yes.
**John:** Interestingly, we don’t know the high fashion snottiness so much, but we’re ahead of Julia Roberts’s character in it, so I would call it a Splash movie. Legally Blonde. When you go back and look at Legally Blonde, she’s actually very confident from the start, but she doesn’t want to fit in and play by the rules and still doesn’t have an understanding of the rules of the world she’s moved into.
**Craig:** That one’s trickier, because she doesn’t come from a strange place, and where she goes is actually arcane and not well known by regular people. I would actually argue that that is a Wizard movie.
**John:** We’ll call that a Wizard movie. My Cousin Vinny?
**Craig:** Again, I think if you were going to put Vengeance in the Wizard section, you should probably put My Cousin Vinny in there too. I’m saying this as somebody from New York. I’m way more in my own water in New York than I would be, say, where he ends up. Where were they in My Cousin Vinny?
**John:** It’s all a blur to me.
**Craig:** The South, somewhere.
**John:** Coming to America is a Splash movie.
**Craig:** Oh, absolutely.
**John:** Hundred percent. E.T., to a degree we want to call it a fish out of water movie at all. I debated putting it on the list. E.T. doesn’t understand the world around him, but he’s not really the hero of the movie.
**Craig:** I think that works. It’s a little bit not in terms of the actual movie, but the concept. Do you remember that movie Encino Man where they thaw out-
**John:** Oh, yeah, of course. There’s a fish out of water.
**Craig:** That’s a Splashy movie where it’s sort of like, “Okay, welcome to our world. This is a fork.” The second Terminator movie, by the way, Terminator 2, it’s very much like that, like, “Welcome. We have to teach you how to smile now. We have to teach you how to say hello and how to not kill people.”
**John:** Borat.
**Craig:** Of course.
**John:** Sister Act.
**Craig:** No.
**John:** Let’s debate this, because I have questions about which thing it falls into. Going into the Catholic nunnery, I guess she’s learning the rules along with us. What do you think?
**Craig:** She is, I think, a Vegas showgirl or lounge act who’s on the run from the Mob. We understand that world of just, I’m a singer and I work in Vegas. She goes into a very strange world, the world of nuns. To me, that’s more of a-
**John:** That’s more of a Wizard situation.
**Craig:** That feels like a Wizard situation, yes.
**John:** Enchanted is a hundred percent Splash movie.
**Craig:** Oh, the ultimate, except for Splash.
**John:** Miss Congeniality. She understands the world of being a FBI agent and then is forced to enter the world of pageants, which is a bizarre choice. I feel like we as an audience are ahead of her, because we understand how these things work. I could see debate though.
**Craig:** I might want to be put that in the other category, because again, if we think about what we identify with, and if that’s the defining issue, I feel more on solid ground with an FBI agent doing FBI stuff and then has to enter a place she does not belong and is a fish out of water. I think I would put that over in the wizard category.
**John:** This is a movie that I couldn’t put into one good category, because I knew I wanted to discuss and debate with you, is Spy with Melissa McCarthy. This I think is very much the same as Miss Congeniality. Melissa McCarthy’s character here actually does know what she’s doing. She is trained in this to some large degree, but she’s not used to being a field agent. It does mine on her being a fish out of water. It feels like a ‘tweener to me. It’s not one or the other.
**Craig:** It may not be a fish out of water movie at all. Spy conceptually reminds me a lot of Spies Like Us. Do you remember that movie?
**John:** Oh, yeah.
**Craig:** What it really is is screw-ups. It’s a screw-up who eventually does a good job. A screw-up with their heart in the right place, that feels like its own genre, so I probably wouldn’t put it in the fish out of water category.
**John:** I think part of what I’m grappling with here is that when we as an audience are familiar with a genre in ways that the characters don’t necessarily seem to be. It feels a little strange. I’m also thinking about The Spy Who Dumped Me, which is more classically a Wizard film. They start in a very normal world and enter into this high-stakes spy world, and yet we as an audience are a little ahead of our characters, just because we seem to understand the genre in ways that they are not understanding it.
**Craig:** One of the things that we have to watch out for with comedy, and this is why I’m glad we’re having this discussion, because there’s some practical considerations here. This is not just an intellectual exercise. If the movie is saying, look, we’ve put this person in a crazy world, and they don’t understand what’s going on, and we’re meant to identify with that character, and we do understand what’s going on because we’ve seen movies, then the comedy can be negatively impacted.
We don’t like it when characters appear to be unaware of the things we are aware of, especially when it comes to how movies function. If somebody gets thrown into a James bond kind of situation and has no idea what the hell is going on and is constantly confused, at some point the audience will say, “Haven’t you seen any James Bond movie?” At some point, you’re going to want to say, “This is like a James Bond movie.” You’re not gonna want to say that exactly. We do want our characters to at least have the same knowledge we do. If they don’t, then you’re dealing a little bit with…
Often, actually, I would argue, a lot of Splash movies where the main character is not the weirdo that’s arriving, those movies are Jesus stories. It’s a strange thing to say that Splash is a Christ tale, but it kind of is. An innocent comes from far beyond, teaches us a bunch of lessons, including quite a few about sacrifice and truth, and changes us for the better. Certainly E.T. might as well have come down on a cross, for God’s sake.
**John:** While we’re talking about Christ movies, let’s talk about Dune. I’m gonna compare Dune versus John Carter of Mars. Dune is a double strange world situation. You have a lead character who’s coming from a really strange world to another really strange world and having to adapt to life in really strange worlds. It is Wizard and Splash at the same time. I think it works really well, but that’s really challenging, because comparing his wet world to his dry world and what is important, we as an audience never have a solid base, like this is what normal is.
John Carter of Mars is a similar situation where he ends up in this fantastical world, but he already is from a fantastical world. I think those are challenging situations to start your story in.
**Craig:** Incredibly so. Because the Writers Guild has changed their rules and I can now talk about, because whatever it is, the participating writer credit or whatever, you are defining exactly what I did on the first Dune movie. My job was to try as best as I could to create a sense of a normal place early in the movie, so that when Duke Leto Jr, Paul Atreides, travels to Dune, we feel that sense that somebody that we know who’s from a place we understand has gone to a new place with new rules, and there’s gonna be a struggle to adapt.
It’s hard but incredibly necessary to ground the audience and the character in the familiar. If the familiar is not familiar to us, then we need to get across that it is very familiar to the characters, that they have mastered the world they live in, they are comfortable with it, they are respected in it, everything is very clear to them about who they are and what they’re meant to be, even if they are emotionally struggling with that. But it’s essential. It means you have to take some time.
You and I have discussed at length how really in the 2000s this thing happened in Hollywood where first acts were suddenly under stress and nobody wanted them. Everybody just wanted to get to the thing, get them to Dune. There’s been a proper and good course correction, particularly in movies, I think, where people understand in fact, first acts are not only necessary to tell your story, but audiences enjoy them.
**John:** There was a concern, like, oh, the story’s not started if we’re still in the first act. It’s like, no, the story has started. This is an important part of the story. It doesn’t mean that the characters should be standing still. It’s that we are getting to know and love our characters and seeing what they want, what they need, what their crisis is. Before everything gets upended, we understand who these characters are.
Yes, I think in the 2000s, there was a real push to, gotta get there faster, we gotta cut 5 pages here or 10 pages, and movies suffered for it. I think it’s good that we seem to be acknowledging more how important that is. I wonder if that’s the sort of movies that’s done it or just people recognizing how good premium cable and streaming shows have been at giving us space and permission to actually tell the story properly has got us thinking about that for features as well.
**Craig:** I will very strongly support the notion that it’s been the, I don’t know what you’d call it, short-form television series thing that emerged that proved that audiences enjoyed that first act. The legendary misfire and brilliant correction by Benioff and Weiss of the first couple of episodes of Game of Thrones was entirely about creating that setup and giving things a chance to breathe and be clear.
If there’s been a correction, there’s probably also been an overcorrection. I think certain series perhaps take a little bit too long. They feel like they wander around a little bit, and perhaps they’re slightly indulgent. You have to hit a target that feels correct. Everybody’s sense of internal rhythm and pace is a bit different.
I completely agree with you that movie executives and producers, it’s not even that they learned lessons from those things, like they were told, “Hey, look, people like this.” They watched them, and they enjoyed them, and they started to examine their own need for that stuff. When they would say, “It’s taking too long for the movie to start,” you’re like, “No no no, listen to the word you just said, start. It needs to start. The start is the start.” It’s like, “It’s taking too long for my appetizer to be dessert.” Correct, because it’s not. It’s your appetizer.
**John:** Wrapping this topic up, I think I’ll go back to what I was saying to this writer in the dream is that these fundamental premise decisions really do matter. Sometimes if you’re looking at what’s not working, what were you attempting to do, and how were you trying to introduce this fish out of water character into the world? Were you trying to do a double strange world thing, which is really difficult?
If you’re looking at a comedy, recognize that it’s hard to do certain kinds of comedy when the world is strange than when the world is familiar to the audience. Vice versa, there’s reasons why traveling to a new world, it’s exciting for the audience to learn along with your hero, but you gotta make sure that you’re balanced there, that the hero’s not ahead of the audience, and the audience is not too far ahead of the hero.
**Craig:** The last bit of advice I would give on this is that, in the same way I often say that there’s not really character, there’s just relationship, and that’s what defines character, if you feel like maybe you do have a double strange world, ask yourself, “Okay, but what is the relationship between those two worlds?” Because if the relationship is interesting, then you will be able to accept it, because you understand what to point at and why it’s relevant. Did you see that old movie… It’s old not to us really, but to people that aren’t ancient like we are. Moscow on the Hudson, Robin Williams.
**John:** Oh yeah. That’s Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines?
**Craig:** Nope. That was Moscow Nights or White Nights.
**John:** Moscow Nights. I don’t remember Moscow on the Hudson.
**Craig:** Was it White Nights? I can’t remember what that was called. Moscow on the Hudson was, Robin Williams plays a musician in a orchestra, like Moscow Symphony, and they travel to the United States to do a special performance, and he defects and has to now live as an immigrant from a very strange place in Harlem. You had a double strange world, because you had both the Soviet Union and all of its weirdness and then you had Harlem in whatever it was, the ’80s or ’90s New York, which very few people had a relationship with. Most people understand to just be like, “Oh, Harlem, ah.”
**John:** You’re saying that Harlem in the ’80s felt exotic to most moviegoers.
**Craig:** Yes. It felt exotic, and it was portrayed as exotic. The relationship between those two things was important, that it was… What they kept pulling out was, on the one hand you have freedom, you’re not being followed by secret police, there are resources; on the other hand, there’s a complete lack of structure, and possibilities are endless and so therefore scary, and there is a weird safety in being a prisoner, and then there’s fear and danger in being outside and at the whims and mercies of the world around you. Really, what it came down to was East versus West.
I guess Dune is like wet, dry. There’s a reason that Frank Herbert made Caladan, the home planet of the Atreides, an ocean planet, a wet place, obviously, because it was important to contrast it with Dune, which is a desert planet. If Caladan had been a swamp planet or like America, like it’s wet, it’s dry, it’s both, then when he got to Dune, he’d be like, “Oh yeah, this is like East Caladan, that’s a bit dry.” You need to create this contrast.
Then the double world thing really does become about opposition as opposed to you’re blowing it, because in certain stories, you want E.T. to arrive at the most mundane possible place on Earth there is. You don’t want him going somewhere weird. We don’t know where he’s from, so where he needs to arrive is Suburb with a capital S.
**John:** For sure. Second topic, Craig, I know from the start of the podcast, one of the things you’ve liked more than anything else has been reviews of movies and TV.
**Craig:** Yay.
**John:** Viewers, critics, you live for them. This was an interesting piece this last week in Vulture by Lane Brown on The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes. It’s really just taking a deep dive into Rotten Tomatoes, which is of course the site that gives a tomatoes score for how critics feel about any given film or television show, above 60 percent is considered fresh, below 60 percent is considered rotten, and how gamified it has become, how arbitrary and meaningless and yet stupidly important it has become for films. Craig, what was your takeaway from this article?
**Craig:** It was an excellent analysis of why something that is this statistically clunky is statistically clunky. Even well-run studies by companies that are experts in data collection, bias reduction, anti-skewing, and error analysis will be subject to certain inherent biases and flaws. Rotten Tomatoes is a goof when it comes to this stuff.
Let’s just start with this. Unlike Metacritic, for instance, which attempts at least to weight reviews by saying, “Okay, this one was a 100 to us. This one was a 5. This one was an 80. Here’s your average,” Rotten Tomatoes is binary. Good or bad.
I don’t know about you, but I have seen, like in the little blurbs, a fresh tomato where it says, “The movie is barely worth seeing, but it has some moments of interest.” You’re like, “Wait, why is that good?” Then some that are bad, where it’s like, “It’s not maybe what people were expecting, but there’s something wonderful about blah-dah-dee blah.” You’re like, “I think you just miscategorized this.”
More importantly, good or bad is not a… This is the great crime of Siskel and Ebert, may they both rest in peace, is they binary-ized something that should be the opposite of that. If there’s one thing we shouldn’t be saying is good or bad. It’s art. Discussing the nuances, how we felt about it, what worked and didn’t for us, these things require subtlety. Somehow we’ve become reliant on this review slurry, as I call it, that accounts for zero subtlety, no shades, just black or white.
**John:** You and I have both had issues with film criticism over the years, but what I will say about when an established film critic is looking at a movie, there is subtlety. There is a look at what’s working, what’s not working, where does this fit into the artist’s overall oeuvre. There’s a reason why you read the whole thing, because you’re hopefully learning something and appreciating the film in a different way. But then when you reduce that to was that a yes or a no, it does become what you’re saying is a slurry.
This article goes into one of the ways this can be gamified is by either recruiting more people to review the movie, and so there’s a company that will just do that, will pay the reviewers to write a review of the movie, or really planning for when the embargoes lift so that the initial wave of reviews that come out will be positive. Quantumania, the Ant-Man movie, looked like it benefited from that, because the initial reviews that dropped were very positive. Rotten Tomatoes score fell over time because more negative reviews came out. The opposite was the Indiana Jones movie, where the initial reviews were negative coming out of the film festival but rose after a time, just because there were more data points. It points to just why the formula is so bad and so stupid.
**Craig:** In statistics, the smaller your sample size is, relative to the population you are ultimately trying to represent, the more error you’re going to have. That’s accounted for, because they will say here’s what we found and here is what the error is, with an expected plus or minus blah. Now, Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t do that. Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t say, “Okay, we’ve got five reviews in. The movie is 100 percent fresh.” What’s gonna happen is people run online and go, “It’s 100 percent fresh.” It’s 100 percent fresh with a plus or minus of 70 percent at that point. It just doesn’t mean anything. Now, when you get to 200 or 300 reviews and you’re in the 90s, then okay, it’s probably plus or minus 3. Even then, how much love was that?
**John:** Was it a situation like a Barbie, where people were literally talking about how good it was, or was it just like, oh, it was better than you’d like, or it wasn’t bad.
**Craig:** Yes, or what about situations where the people that love it love it, and the people who give it a bad review just are mildly bad. You point out something correct, which is that reviewers who are trying to do their job well will often engage in quite in-depth analysis. Regardless of the relative merits of it, they’re trying, and it’s there. None of it matters to Rotten Tomatoes. They don’t give a damn.
**John:** No. Craig, this is giving me flashbacks to Ain’t It Cool News. Our younger listeners will have no idea what this website was.
**Craig:** Thank god.
**John:** What color would you even call it? It was an orangey brown.
**Craig:** It was a diarrhea-ish kind of brownish.
**John:** Run by a man named Harry Knowles out of Texas. The reviews there would be rapturous or scathing and actually mattered for a brief moment. For anything that relied on fanboy culture, it was incredibly important to get that review, and the gamification of that was terrifying.
I will say I still click through Rotten Tomatoes. One of the reasons I do it is, it’s actually a very handy aggregator of all the reviews, so I can see, oh, what did Dana Stevens think. I can click through and see what she thought and then see what other reviewers thought of the same thing and quickly get to all those things. That I think is its useful purpose. Its useful purpose is not calculating the pros and cons.
**Craig:** It certainly is a decent place for that. They carve out top reviewers. I’m not sure how they quality certain reviewers as top reviewers. It also helps a little bit if you’re looking through, and you see a vicious pan, but it’s from some ridiculous website no one’s ever heard of. Then you can put it in the box. It’s the other thing that Rotten Tomatoes does is makes an equivalency where there ought not be one. The other thing it’s fun for is clicking on Armond White and just reading his reviews, just to see how awesome it is to be an anti person.
**John:** Having said all this, I would say of course I should be looking at Metacritic instead, which at least one of the things that I do like about Metacritic when I do go through to visit, you can see the people who loved it, the little blurb will show why they loved it. People who didn’t like it, it’ll show why they didn’t like it. That actually is a useful scale, which you do not get out of the rotten tomato/fresh tomato blurbs on Rotten Tomatoes’ site.
We have no insight here. I will say that for filmmakers, unfortunately, in 2023 as we’re recording this, it still does matter. Your studio is going to think about it. You’d have to be aware of that. They may have a strategy for how they’re going to deal with it. I would just urge folks who are not making movies but enjoying movies to take it with the giant grain of salt it deserves.
**Craig:** I don’t know if you’ve been on Metacritic lately. They finally, after it seems like decades, update their look.
**John:** I’m looking at it now for the first time.
**Craig:** Look, it’s still not what I would call great, but at least it doesn’t look like it was made in 1998 anymore. The concept of Metacritic is a superior concept to Rotten Tomatoes. The layout is nowhere near as good. It’s just a lot busier. They feature user reviews to a very large extent, whereas Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t bother with that.
User reviews are a place where, notoriously on Metacritic, and particularly with video games, you’ll get a lot of review bombing. There’s some review bombing as well on Rotten Tomatoes. There’s really no way around the review bombing, except to just say, okay, we’re not gonna bother with user reviews anymore.
For some reason, cultural, I don’t know what it is, Metacritic still has a near cultural monopoly on video game reviews. Video games are just as big, if not a larger segment of the entertainment business than anything else. I’m not sure why that’s the case, but I’m glad, because I think that the Metacritic method is at least marginally more valid.
**John:** I would agree. Drew, I think we have time for a listener question. What do you have for us?
**Drew:** John in London writes, “I’m writing a short animation from an animal’s perspective. No human dialogue is understood throughout it. Just a tone of voice to pick up the intention. Same between the animals. The final product will be a gibberish, made-up language. However, I feel it would be useful for the reader to somehow indicate towards or even write the dialogue to better understand what will eventually be translated through cadence on screen. How would you recommend I approach this? Should I write the dialog out with a disclaimer at the front saying this will not be understood, or should I not write any dialog and find a way of describing how they feel in the action? I’ve done the latter so far, and it makes the script a bit laborious and novelish to read. I could describe how something is said in a dialogue column to easily convey to the reader that dialogue is being spoken, or is that too silly? Or anything I haven’t mentioned? Would love to hear how you’d approach this.”
**John:** I’ve actually faced this situation. Frankenweenie, of course, has large segments where it’s just the dog and there’s no dialogue around him, so you have to make sure you understand what the dog is reacting to. It’s great to write a character who doesn’t speak.
In another project I was working on, there is language being spoken that the central character doesn’t understand. I did go through both strategies, where on one I would, in italics, explain what the conversation was about. I ultimately did go and write the dialogue and put it in little braces to make it clear you’re never actually to understand, this is not gonna be a subtitle, but just so we can get a sense of what the intention is behind those words, because it does matter. Craig, what’s your instinct?
**Craig:** The movie that comes to mind, any of the movies with the Minions. They speak in gibberish, but obviously they’re trying to get ideas and thoughts across. My instinct here would be to give those characters names, create a little bit of gibberish, particularly if it’s specific gibberish. The Minions love saying banana. In parentheses, say what it is. It’s easy when you start to just say, they only speak in gibberish, but it’s clear from how they’re saying it how they feel. Then it would say Minion Number 3, in parentheses, “That’s hysterical,” and then have him say, “Banana, banana,” whatever they say, rah rah rah. It is gonna be easier to read that way-
**John:** It is.
**Craig:** … than putting everything in action. People will just not read it.
**John:** We have among our listenership, I am 100 percent certain, some folks who have worked on the Minions movies. Can you write in and tell us what you do on the Minions movies and whether there’s dialogue on the page there? I kind of feel like there is.
Also, on the plane recently, I watched one of the Minions movies I hadn’t seen. They’re just speaking Italian. You really can understand. I can look away from the screen and understand a lot of what they were saying at a certain point. I don’t know if it’s all Minions or later Minions movies. I’m picking up a lot of their words. I’m curious what the choices were about the Minion language. I’m sure I could Google that. If you worked on a movie, I would love to hear what you actually did and thought about for that.
**Craig:** Great.
**John:** Cool. It’s time for our One Cool Things. Craig, you were talking about Metacritic, and this is obviously gonna be on Metacritic. Talk us through it.
**Craig:** I haven’t even played it yet. I’ve just been watching. Because I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and I need to finish Baldur’s Gate 3 before I go on to the next insane experience, I’ve got Starfield waiting in the wings. I’ve just seen some brief things as they roll through on Twitter, like, oh, here’s a clip of somebody spawning a thousand potatoes, but also here’s a clip of somebody doing cool stuff, and people talking about the game. It sure does look like Elder Scrolls in space, and I am there for that.
**John:** Yeah, that’s good stuff.
**Craig:** It’s inevitable once I finish my assault on the, and then I will just put spoiler alert, retracted, and one day we’ll discuss who the big bad is in Baldur’s Gate, then yeah, it’s gonna be time for Starfield. It looks awesome.
**John:** I started Baldur’s Gate this week. It really is just delightfully done. I’m playing it on PS5, which is a pretty good version of how I think you could best do it. Obviously, there’s things that on a PC would be a little bit more nimble, but I think that’s a good version of it. Craig, I meant to ask you, for the character you created for Baldur’s Gate, were you adapting a character you played before on your real game or did you just make a brand new person?
**Craig:** I adapted a character that I play in the game that I play in. He’s a rogue named-
**John:** Great.
**Craig:** … Finrod the Fantastic.
**John:** Fantastic.
**Craig:** He is fantastic.
**John:** I adapted Eldenere, who was my very handsome sorcerer from the game we played together. It’s fun to see that.
**Craig:** Eldenere is gonna have a great time sleeping with everyone. I have so far only slept with one person. She’s a Githyanki.
**John:** That’s good.
**Craig:** The sex was pretty weird and aggressive. I told this to Melissa, and I have to say, it seemed like she was jealous. I think she was saying, “That’s weird. That’s creepy.” I’m like, “No, no, it’s awesome.” I think she’s jealous. I think she’s jealous of my Githyanki girlfriend. She doesn’t know what the Gith look like. If she did-
**John:** I’m gonna text her a photo, like, “This is who’s Craig been sleeping with.” Then she’ll get over it.
**Craig:** She’ll get over it. She’ll be like, “Okay, if that’s what you want, pal, fine. I’m better looking than that thing.” Correct.
**John:** Correct.
**Craig:** Correct.
**John:** I spent the last week in New York City, which I loved. I got to catch up with some friends, see some shows. It’s been too long since I’ve been to New York. One of the things I really like about New York in recent years, which I have not talked about on the air, is that the buses are just so much better than they used to be. We take the bus to get around a lot. Obviously, yes, there’s a subway. You can get places with the subway. If you need to get across town or you’re just in a weird route, it is always worth pulling up Apple Maps or Google Maps and going to transit and see could a bus take you there, because it probably could. The buses in New York, they’re new, they’re modern, they’re super clean, they come really often.
Because all transit there is using Omni, which is where you can just tap your phone or your watch against it, it’s just so handy and so easy to get there. You’re never worrying about change or having enough credits on your Metro card.
**Craig:** That was the misery of taking the bus when I was kid growing up in New York was exact change. If you were a student, you got a bus pas. The problem is you would lose your bus pass inevitably, because you were 11. Then you’re sitting there going kaching, kaching, kaching, kaching, kaching. It’s like, “I’m one cent short.” “Tough. Get off the bus.” “But you took my other 49 cents.” “Get off the bus.” The buses were not clean.
**John:** The buses are bright and clean and beautiful.
**Craig:** Love it.
**John:** I just loved it. It just makes so much more sense than trying to take a taxi or take an Uber any place. Just hop on a bus. My friend Amy always said she would recommend the bus 15 years ago. I’m like, “The buses look really sketch.” They’ve really improved them a lot.
**Craig:** Fantastic.
**John:** Love it. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
**Craig:** Fun.
**John:** We have a fantastic outro this week by Nico Mansy. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing.
We have T-shirts and hoodies, and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau, including the new Scriptnotes University T-shirt and sweatshirt. They’re great. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on diabetes. Craig, it’s so good talking with you.
**Craig:** It’s so good talking with you.
[Bonus Segment]
**John:** Craig, you have the floor. Tell us about diabetes.
**Craig:** First of all, let’s talk about what diabetes is. Diabetes is a disease where your body is no longer removing glucose, sugar, the basic energy molecule, from your blood. The way our bodies normally function, we eat food. The food is transformed into various substances, but glucose is the one that we use for immediate energy. We have insulin, which is created by cells in the isles of Langerhans. Islets? Islets of Langerhans, which are wonderfully named cells in the pancreas. Insulin is a hormone that goes ahead and helps the body take the glucose out of the bloodstream and into cells where it can be converted into energy.
There are two kinds of diabetes. In diabetes, people can’t do this very well or they can’t do it at all. There is type 1 diabetes. This is the kind that we find in children.
**John:** I have a nephew who has type 1 diabetes.
**Craig:** Type 1 diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, it’s an autoimmune disorder. The body’s immune system attacks the insulin-creating cells in the pancreas, destroys them, and the type 1 diabetic needs to take insulin through injection, or there are pumps, in order to get glucose out of the blood, or they’ll die. There’s all sorts of problems that hyperglycemia can lead to, but it becomes incredibly difficult when you have zero insulin. Like I said, it’s what we see in kids, and happily it gets diagnosed. It is very manageable, more manageable now than ever, because we have science. We have continuous glucose monitors that monitor the glucose in your blood. We have insulin pumps that pump the insulin into your body.
Then there’s the far more common type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes occurs almost always in adults, although unfortunately there are a lot of teenagers and young adults that are getting type 2 diabetes. That is generally the product of diet and lifestyle. The body gets too much glucose hammered at it all the time through eating and sedentary lifestyle. What happens is the insulin-making cells get tired. They start to wear out. They’re just getting tapped on too much. The cells that receive insulin, which tells it, hey, pull the glucose out of the blood, they become insulin-resistant because they’re getting tapped on too much. The body gets less and less efficient at processing glucose. The glucose in the blood goes up. This leads to a lot of other health problems, heart issues, glaucoma, neurological problems, numbness and tingling in the extremities. In extreme cases, you end it with amputations. It’s not good.
I was diagnosed with diabetes a few months ago. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, of course, because I’m an adult, which is normal. That’s what they do.
**John:** Tell me about this diagnosis. Were they based on a blood test? Were they looking at the glucose in your blood? They were looking at the amount of insulin? What is the testing?
**Craig:** They start very strictly with glucose in your blood. When you get a standard blood test, you have to fast for it, typically, and it’s because they want to know what your fasting glucose is. When you wake up in the morning, they measure glucose. They use different units on either side of the pond. Here in the U.S., the numbers of the units are such that they want to see, when you wake up in the morning and you’ve been fasting, 99 or less. If it’s between 100 and 125, they call prediabetes, so you’re starting to have a problem. 125 and up, welcome to diabetes.
They said, “Okay, it’s early. It’s 130 or whatever, but it’s diabetes. We’re gonna try and put you on these diabetic medications,” and dah dah dah, which I did not tolerate very well. There’s Metformin. I did a dance, and it was terrible. I was just nauseated and all sorts of GI issues.
A few months go by, and I had a chance to… I won’t say who it is, because I don’t want people to bother them, but there’s a pretty famous screenwriter that I met, who said, “My wife is the leading diabetes doctor in California.” Sometimes people say those things and you’re like, “Eh, is she?” Actually, in this case, she really is. I was like, “I feel bad. I’m not a special case. I don’t think I need all of this special attention.” He was like, “Just talk to her. She’ll talk to you.” So I did.
She asked me this question that I was not expecting. She said, “Do you know what kind of diabetes you have?” I was like, “I assume type 2, because I’m an adult.” She went, “If that were the case, I probably wouldn’t be asking the question.” She did additional tests. The additional tests are generally for antibodies, although while they’re also testing for antibodies, they’re also looking at your actual insulin levels. There is a particular antibody that’s a primary indicator of type 1 diabetes. Mine was through the roof.
**John:** Wow.
**Craig:** There are varying names for these things. One of these things you’ll see is sometimes you’ll see it called type 1.5 diabetes. It’s not really between type 1 and type 2. It’s just because you’re an adult. Or they’ll say LADA, late acquired diabetes, dah dah.
**John:** Late onset, yeah.
**Craig:** She’s like, “None of those things are a thing.” She’s like, “There are two diabetes, type 1 and type 2. You, my friend, have type 1.” What are the pluses and minuses of type 1 diabetes? Not too many pluses. If there’s any plus, it’s that your lifestyle did not lead to this point. That’s also the biggest downside, because you can’t change anything. There’s no great eating and thing that’s gonna turn any of this around or really reduce it. In fact, no matter what I do, as somebody with type 1 diabetes that is expressed later in life, I will proceed inexorably toward zero insulin. It might take 5 years, it might take 10, but it’s gonna happen, at which point I will be required to take insulin.
The other not great news about type 1 diabetes is that it doesn’t get treated the same. Most of the treatments that we have are for type 2 diabetes, because the vast majority of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is not really. There’s a few things, but mostly-
**John:** Mostly it’s insulin.
**Craig:** You basically try and not eat things that spike your glucose and then eventually take insulin. That’s why I wanted to talk about this, because for all my prattling about how I’m a doctor, I’m just not licensed, I did not know that adult type 1 diabetes was even a thing.
I’m saying this because I suspect we have at least a number of listeners who have been diagnosed with diabetes who I hope will ask to be tested for the antibodies for type 1 diabetes, because if you don’t know, what happens is you continue to take medicine for type 2 diabetes. A lot of those medicines have annoying side effects. They kind of don’t work. You feel bad and frustrated, and you get worse and worse. People will tell you you’re just not doing these things that you need to do to make it less worse and worse, when in fact there is nothing you can do. It’s better to know exactly what you have and be completely on top of it from the start.
In my case, what’s nice is, super early, my body is still making insulin, although less than you do and not quite as effective, because it’s less. I wear a continuous glucose monitor, which is a miracle of science. It’s a little thing that you just go boink. You don’t even feel it. It sticks on your back of your arm, lasts for two weeks, feeds you a constant glucose number to your phone, which is great, so you could see I’m in the green, I’m fine. The app is linked up with my doctor. Every week, she can just review the tracings, review the charts, and in a glance go, “Okay, here’s where you are.”
This is important. If you have been diagnosed with diabetes and you have not been tested for these antibodies for type 1 diabetes, I strongly recommend that you do get tested. If you’re a borderline case, maybe they’re like, “Okay, it’s really mostly just type 2.” But if you’re a stark case, like I was. I think it was, I don’t know, 80 times what it should’ve been. Then you get to know exactly what you have. I’m spreading the word.
**John:** Craig, I’m sorry that you’ve got this diagnosis, but I’m also relieved that you have an answer and that you were able to take initiative and figure out what it was that was actually causing it, and so you weren’t sticking on drugs that weren’t working for you.
I remember reading this last week, a relatively small study, but it was showing that some of these drugs that have been introduced, that are effective against type 2 diabetes, are actually remarkably effective, which is great for folks who have type 2. But that’s not gonna help you. For you to be able to get the answer about why they weren’t working for you is fantastic. I’ve noticed you eating healthier over the last couple months. This is obviously part of the reason why you were doing so.
I have another friend who is pretty much in your situation, where he’s a little heavier, and he assumed that he had type 2 diabetes. It wasn’t until he actually fully got tested where it was like, “Oh no, no, you actually have type 1 diabetes.” He’s using insulin. It’s going great. The good thing about being an adult who’s responsible is you can do it. You know how to do it. The technology is better than ever.
**Craig:** The technology is better than ever. It does get a little confusing when people have a number of the comorbidities for type 2, if they are obese, if they have metabolic syndrome. Then it’s understandable, I think, why there’s a misdiagnosis there, although honestly, almost everybody over the age of 40 who gets diagnosed with diabetes, there’s just an assumption by I would imagine 98 percent of primary care physicians that they have type 2 diabetes. You’re absolutely right. If you can jump on it early, there is no reason why you should have any less life expectancy than anybody else. It’s entirely about the early and careful and expert management of this.
You’re right. It’s funny. The eating choices I make are entirely about converts quickly to glucose, so glycemic index. That does overlap with healthier eating. Generally, what it means is low carb, and specifically avoiding high-glycemic carbs, potatoes. You know what I had once that sent my blood sugar so high so fast, the thing that did it the most?
**John:** What was it?
**Craig:** Popcorn.
**John:** It melts into sugar.
**Craig:** Popcorn is just starch. That’s what it is. It’s just a kernel of corn that the starch exploded outwards from heat. All that white of what popcorn is is starch. Corn syrup, as we know, is just… That starch gets converted to glucose instantaneously and in massive quantities, at least in me. I avoid those things, like I said, potatoes and white rice and white bread.
**John:** Craig, you love an old-fashioned, so what is your-
**Craig:** Here’s an interesting thing.
**John:** How are you handling an old-fashioned?
**Craig:** This is why I love the continuous glucose monitor, and not only because I don’t have to constantly stick a needle in my finger and squeeze blood out. I am a constantly running experiment. I’m not a big drinker. I’m a pretty moderate drinker. I’ll have a drink, maybe two on a fun night. Alcohol doesn’t really cause much of a problem. Interestingly, sugar itself doesn’t generally do it. I will get a higher spike from eating French fries than I would from having a dessert, because when you’re eating something sweet, you can’t eat that much of it.
**John:** That’s true.
**Craig:** You can eat a lot of carbs, which turns into 12 desserts in your body. You just don’t realize it. This is all gross simplification. I have learned what does cause trouble and what doesn’t. This morning I got a loaf of bread from the Levain Bakery in our neighborhood. It was a whole grain bread. Whole grains generally I do okay with. Not this one. Jeez, Louise. I was looking at the thing. My phone goes bleep bleep bleep. That’s like, uh-oh, you’re heading toward some trouble.
**John:** Alert, alert.
**Craig:** I was like, “Hm.” There’s really nothing you can do at that point except lodge it. Happily, it came back down pretty rapidly. I was like, “Okay, can’t eat that.” Apples, no problem. Asian pear, skyrocketed. I’m constantly running experiments on myself and learning information. I don’t get paid by Big Pharma. For those of you with conspiracy hats, calm down.
I use this thing called the FreeStyle Libre 3. That is just incredible, the information it gives you in real time. It really is maybe behind by 5 or 10 minutes, I think, because it’s sampling your interstitial fluid as opposed to your blood directly. It’s phenomenally useful. It’s so weird to look at a chart on your phone that connects in the most clear way what happens when you eat and what happens in your body, because otherwise it’s like a dream. I eat food. Then I move around. My day goes on. You just forget. You don’t realize that there’s this thing happening in you. It’s remarkable to watch.
**John:** As we do the next 10 years of the podcast, we’ll be looking forward to your updates on where stuff goes, because it does feel like, like you said, there’s not other great treatment options right now. It does feel like there’s so many opportunities for them to figure out new stuff to do. Since diabetes is about your body is no longer producing insulin, there may be ways to regenerate the things that create insulin. There may be ways to embed stuff better. I think there’s going to be some real innovation here.
**Craig:** That is possible. The challenge, autoimmune disorders are always difficult. They have come so far in other areas. My oldest kid has Crohn’s, and she takes Skyrizi, which is one of these complicated biologic medicines. They’ve done remarkable work in that area. It’s really been revolutionary. When you combine all the people that have ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s, there’s a lot of them. There are tens of millions of Americans, I don’t know, maybe there’s 40 million Americans who have type 2 diabetes. How many people have type 1? That’s the question, because obviously drug companies go where the fire is, because that’s also where the money is. Statistics.
Center for Disease Control, the CDC, in 2018, so this is five years old, but it’s probably pretty close, 21 million adults had type 2 diabetes. 1.3 million had type 1.
**John:** A much smaller number.
**Craig:** It’s so much smaller. When you have 20 times the amount with type 2, it’s not surprising that everybody’s chasing that. Also, type 2 diabetes is an easier thing to tackle.
**John:** Craig, part of the reason why you wanted to talk about this topic is that your argument is that some of those people in that 21 million probably actually do have type 1 diabetes and they have not been tested properly for it.
**Craig:** That’s right. That’s the other issue is how many people have been misdiagnosed. The more I read, the more you see, even if it’s not a ton, it’s a non-zero number. That’s frightening for people that have that. I don’t know what our average age is for our listenership, although as we keep going, it probably keeps going up. Probably got more people coming in than people leaving.
But there’s gotta be at least a few people in here listening who may be wondering, “Wait a second. I wonder if I should get this checked out.” There are, I think, three antibodies, but the big one is something called GAD65, which is an antibody to glutamic acid decarboxylase. I think the normal amount that they allow is between 0 and 5 units, and I had 175.
**John:** That’s a problem.
**Craig:** That’s not good. There’s that. That’s not going anywhere. That just is what it is.
**John:** Again, we are not a medical show, but this last week I was talking with a writer who is phenomenal. She had initially talked to me on the picket line, but I followed up in email with her. She had a situation where for two years, she just could not get healthy, and she was having all these issues and couldn’t figure out what was going on. She listened to the Sarah Polley episode where Sarah Polley was talking about her post-concussion syndrome and the doctor that got her through that. My friend, this writer, was like, “Wow, that’s what’s happening to me.” She went to a doctor, went through a program, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and is now recovered. Hopefully, there’s people out there who have a similar situation, where they will hear you talking about this misdiagnosis and realize, oh, okay, this is something I need to take control of.
**Craig:** I hope so. I would even suggest to any adults who have been told, “Hey, you’re prediabetic,” or just any adults over the age of 45, I don’t know, just middle age, ask your doctors just to test for these antibodies anyway, even if your blood sugar is normal, because the antibodies are gonna be there before the disease is expressed. The earlier you know, the better off you get.
**John:** Craig, I wish you great health.
**Craig:** Thank you.
**John:** We will follow up on this over the years to come.
**Craig:** We sure will.
**John:** Thanks, Craig. Thanks, Drew.
**Craig:** Thanks, guys.
**Drew:** Thanks, guys.
**John:** Bye.
**Craig:** Bye.
Links:
* [The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.vulture.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-movie-rating.html) by Lane Brown for Vulture
* Read the [Frankenweenie script here](https://johnaugust.com/library#frankenweenie) and on [Weekend Read 2](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read-2/id1534798355)
* [Starfield](https://bethesda.net/en/game/starfield)
* [Manhattan Bus Map](https://new.mta.info/map/5391) by [MTA](https://new.mta.info/)
* [Highland 2](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/)
* [Writer Emergency Pack XL](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/writer-emergency-pack-xl)
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Nico Mansy ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and is edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).
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